If you're up there performing a song for the first time, it's as if you're hearing it through their ears. You become acutely self-conscious of the song in performance, so that's a good thing before recording. But I like to have some surprises for the audience; I don't want the audience to know everything that's going to be on the record, because these days, with the Internet, people become avid collectors of pre-knowledge.

It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

They came in the thousands from the whole human race to pay their respects at his last resting place.

I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.

I'm sure every pattern has been covered, but it's nice to think you might dwell on some that other people don't.

I'm glad I can do both full-band electric and solo acoustic performances. It's nice to have contrast, so if you get fed up with one, you can just switch to the other one. It's great to go to a town and play an acoustic show, and then you can come back a year later and play electric, and the show's really fairly different. The repertoire will be 50 percent different. The musical energy is completely different.